Merge a Memo field with concatinated data into a Word letter

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magicdds- - 12 May 2008 05:06 GMT

I am merging a record with a lot of fields from Access into a letter in Word.
Some fields are PatientName, PatientAddress, PatientCity, etc. My question
has to do with one field that is a Memo field (because it contains more than
255 characters). The Memo field has data that has been concatinated in
Access, into the single Memo field. The data in this field might look like
this:

Diagnosis [Angle Classification] (Class II), Diagnosis [Arch Length
Discrepancy] (Mild maxillary crowding), Diagnosis [Arch Length Discrepancy]
(Moderate mandibular crowding),Treatment [Fixed Appliances] (Full maxillary
and mandibular braces), [Fixed Appliances] (Lingual Holding Arch), Treatment
[Removable Appliances] (Occipital pull headgear), Treatment [Removable
Appliances] (Biteplate), Treatment [Removable Appliances] (Mandibuar Retainer)

Once this data has been received by Word, I would like to break it up so
that it prints within the body of the letter to look like this:

Diagnosis: Angle Classification: Class II
Arch Length Discrepancy: Mild Maxillary Crowding
Moderate
mandibular crowding
Treatment: Fixed Appliances: Full maxillary and mandibular
braces
Lingual Holding
Arch
Removable Appliances: Occipital Pull Headgear
Biteplate
Retainer

Does anyone know how I can do this?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Mark Knoll

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magicdds- - 12 May 2008 05:16 GMT

The printout in the post didn't come out correctly.

It should be:

Diagnosis:
Angle Classification: Class II
Arch Length Discrepancy: Mild Maxillary Crowding
Moderate mandibular crowding
Treatment:
Fixed Appliances: Full maxillary and mandibular braces
Lingual Holding Arch
Removable Appliances: Occipital Pull Headgear
Biteplate
Retainer

I hope this explains it better.
Mark

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Doug Robbins - Word MVP - 12 May 2008 07:44 GMT

My first recommendation is to do away with the concatenation and make the
individual data fields available.

Then, I would use an Access report rather that try and do this with Word.

It is not going to be possible to achieve the layout that you desire during
the mail merge process. It may be possible to use a macro to do some
re-arrangement of the information in the document created by the mail merge
if the data source contained the original source data (not the memo field
containing a concatenation of it).

Signature

Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

>I am merging a record with a lot of fields from Access into a letter in
>Word.
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
>
> Mark Knoll

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magicdds- - 12 May 2008 23:29 GMT

In the web site:

http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister/MergFram.htm

in the section: Group multiple items for a single condition

Item #3 reads as follows:
You can create a user-defined function in your Access database that
concatenates all items for the list into a single string. Place this function
in an expression in the query you will be using as a datasource so that it
can be selected as a single field in the mail merge. Please note that this
method only works when the merge link method is DDE; ODBC drivers do not
recognize user-defined functions. An example of such a function and a query
using it is in the file WdAcc95.zip for Office 95 (51 KB); WdAcc97.zip for
Office 97 and later (131 KB).

This seems to indicate that what I want to do is actually suggested by Ms.
Meister. The only problem is I don't understand her explaination on what to
do with the data once it is merged into Word.

Any ideas on how to work with this data?

Mark

> My first recommendation is to do away with the concatenation and make the
> individual data fields available.
[quoted text clipped - 48 lines]
> >
> > Mark Knoll

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